Top 10 Dick Moves

The year in bad actors and bad looks

Some ill deeds, large or small, illegal or just plain wrong, go unpunished. This year had its share of shady deals and self-serving choices, not to mention a few jackasses who seemed to do wrong for no damn reason. Here we pay tribute to 10 jerks who made us roll our eyes, curl our lips and pound our desks. These, dear reader, were some dick moves.

10. KINS

The unabashedly sexist "Can a woman actually be president?" poll was an unsavory mid-century throwback, like a salmon gelatin mold; it was ugly and dated, and nobody wants it.

We feel for the woman who, back in April, got a call from someone claiming to be the manager of the pizza joint she'd ordered from and that the pie was dosed with psychedelic mushrooms. After all, the only gastronomic torture greater than waiting for your pizza is being afraid to eat it as the aroma wafts like a siren's call toward the rocks. The pizza turned out to be untainted, but still. Dick move.

Granted, the overnight low-enforcement areas for the homeless, moving between parking lots like a shambling game of musical chairs, were untenable for law enforcement and local businesses, and hardly ideal for those sleeping there. Still, the homeless who were counting on a place to stay needed more of a heads up than the 12 hours notice the city gave them about the eviction. Seriously.

Hat tip to this local blogger who all but named minors involved in the thwarted Fortuna High School bombing — which turned out to maybe not be a bombing attempt after all — by posting their initials in true high school style. Standard practice among journalists is not to identify children, much less those who were never charged with a crime, unless they or their families go public. Bloggers with ethical standards don't either. But hey, you do you.

This domino effect of dick moves began with inviting gay-bashing, murder-music poster child Sizzla to headline. The Mateel Community Center answered the ensuing backlash with a defensive, tone-deaf press release and sealed the deal with a press conference that reporters were told would be shut down if anyone asked about anti-gay anything. Not the positive vibrations we were hoping for.

The Eureka city attorney's decision to fight transparency and the release of dashcam footage to the Journal all the way to the state Supreme Court, well, like the video of the arrest and alleged assault, which is live on our website, call it how you see it. But her assertion in court that all EPD's footage must be protected as personnel material because its officers are constantly accused of misconduct was both ridiculous and insulting to our local police force. Just don't.

OK, technically this was December 2015 but we're still mad. To the fool(s) who climbed up and wrenched an enormous metal bird off Jack Sewell's graceful kinetic sculpture on the Eureka Boardwalk: Is it hanging over your sagging couch? Did you sell it for scrap? Public art feeds the soul of a community, you dick.

Dude, fix your buildings or give them up. The frankly disgusting and unsafe disrepair of many of your properties and the disregard you show your tenants — you know, the poor — while dragging out minimal repairs under court order is flat out immoral. Humboldt is done with the Squires brand of squalor. And dickery.

We have a winner. The game of chicken this out-of-area billionaire played with skilled nursing facilities — threatening closure in a bid for more state cash — was a greed-driven dick move that jeopardized some of the most vulnerable members of our community: the elderly he is charged with caring for. Fuck that guy.